International marriage brokers: can money buy you love?

What kind of man would use a 'marriage broker' to find love? And what kind of
women await them? Will Storr travelled to Colombia to find out.

Colombia's marriage broker industryPhoto: Jacquie Boyd

By Will Storr

7:00AM BST 21 May 2013

Almost immediately, I don’t know what to say. I met my driver, Juan Carlos, about a minute ago. He turned the ignition, hit the driving wheel in a businesslike fashion and announced, “So! You have come here for women.”

“Yes,” I offer, eventually.

As we turn out of the airport car-park in Colombia’s second city, Medellin, I glance out of my window and pondering, for an instant, the possibility of just jumping right out of it.

I knew it would be like this.

Juan’s in his early 40s. He wears stonewashed jeans, a dirty T-shirt that says ‘NASA ROCKET SCIENTIST’ and has the pallor and belly of a man who gave up on himself at least 10 years ago. He’s taking me to the headquarters of his bride-finding agency. Neither Juan nor the agency know that I’m here as a journalist, trying to find out what draws thousands of men from all over the world to meet potential wives. From the US, from Britain and Europe and Australia they come, to socialise with women they’ve preselected from an online catalogue in the hope it’ll all end in… what? Love? Friendship? Sex? Comfort? Someone, anyone, who might offer an honest smile when they wake in the morning?

We’re driving up a winding, vegetation-lined road that leads up a mountain, the other side of which, simmering under the South American sun in a vast natural amphitheatre, lies the city Juan's employers refer to simply as "paradise". As we begin our descent into the city, I ask Juan what kind of men come on these holidays.

“Mostly American, 30s to 50s. This afternoon I’m picking up a politician who’s coming from Hungary. Third time for him.” He changes gear. “I got a girl myself, you know. I love her. She’s beautiful, she’s pretty, she’s a systems analyst. But I don’t wanna get married. I know how it goes. You fall in love, you have fun for a few years and then you get bored.”

We pull up at a traffic light. Walking past the car window, at perfect eye-height is a beautiful Colombian woman with a pushchair, her chest straining from a tiny white t-shirt. Juan turns to met with an expression of deep seriousness and announces, “I like that.”

Today, the ‘International Marriage Broker’ [IMB] business is seen as an adjunct to the $2bn a year online dating industry. There are thought to be around 600 IMBs operating currently, representing a trade which began in South East Asia before spreading to the countries of Latin America and the former Soviet Union, especially Ukraine.

But IMBs predate phenomenally successful websites such as match.com. As far back as 1998, a report commissioned by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service found there to be 10,000 marriages a year instigated by IMBs, 4,000 to US men, the rest mostly to people from Europe, Australia and Canada. Wannabe husbands are 94% white; politically and ideologically conservative; economically and professionally successful and to be seeking women with “traditional values”. (In discussing our often faulty perception of the values of foreign women, it points to the marvelous irony that the government in Thailand has been forced to introduce legislation to limit brides being imported due to the firm belief by local men that Thai women “expect too much from their husbands.”). They also indicate that brokered marriages are more robust than those in which the participants are more traditionally sourced, having an 80 percent success rate compared to an average UK rate of just over 50 percent. As for the motivations of the potential wives, the report’s authors sagely conclude, “We cannot know what is in a woman’s mind.”

In response to their being three murders of foreign brides in their country between 1995 and 2003, the US government introduced the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act [IMBRA]in 2005 which, in part, enforced disclosure of criminal or violent history in the wife-hunters. The husbands, meanwhile, are furious about the legislation; campaigners insist it “creates a legal presumption that American men are abusers and foreign women are stupid… We believe in freedom of privacy and association. We believe in freedom of speech. Most of all, we believe in love.”

Colombian women want a Western husband because "men in Medellin think it’s permissible to have seven boyfriends" (Jacquie Boyd)

After dropping into the agency office to sign a document permitting the agency to check my name against a collection of registers for IMBRA purposes, Juan delivers me to the apartment in which I’ll be spending the next three nights. As I’m ironing my trousers in preparation for my first date, the phone keeps ringing. It’s an angry female. There’s a child in the background, crying. Every time she calls I tell her I don’t speak Spanish, at which point her shouting takes on a sarcastic, hectoring quality. I’m spooked by these phonecalls. They’re like Shakespearian witches, wailing bad portent.

I find my first potential wife in the backseat of Juan’s car. She’s attractive, in a thin white cotton top and light blue jeans. When I notice how much time she’s evidently spent on her make-up and hair I’m nipped by guilt.

Juan translates my confirmation of her cuteness for Yvonne and she smiles strangely and looks out of her window. She’s not what I was expecting. I imagined plastic stilettos, make-up like a Warhol pastiche and unsubtle enquiries about the size of my house. I imagined someone whose flirtatiousness would be hostile and come with, stabby, diamante fingernails. And yet Yvonne seems so… nice.

We drive to a restaurant in Pueblito Paisa, a tiny reconstruction of a traditional Colombian town that’s been built on top of a high rocky pinnacle. Juan, who’s still in his ‘NASA ROCKET SCIENTIST’ T-shirt, sits opposite, watching us eat our ‘parilla’ - grilled chicken, baked potato and plantain boiled in sugar water served on a wooden board. Via his translation, I discover that Yvonne is a private detective who follows men whose partners suspect them of adultery. She takes videos of their indiscretions and charges by the hour. She lives with her parents and her father owns a car park. When I ask why she wants a Western husband, she says, “Because the men in Medellin think it’s permissible to have seven boyfriends.”

After dinner, Juan shows us the view from the top of Pueblito Paisa. Millions of bulbs from the vast barrios stretch up the mountains that surround the city. Every light is the home of a family living in malevolent poverty; they blink back accusingly at the skyscrapers of the banks and multinationals that rise from the ground. To our left, the airport road rises diagonally up the hillside, a massive slash bleeding gold from the dark earth. When I ask Juan to point out Medellin’s finest sights, he gives me a long and detailed breakdown of every shopping mall in the metropolis before showing me the train station.

“The only train in Colombia is in Medellin,” he says, chest swelling with pride. “In Bogota, they have no train.”

As we walk happily down the hill I notice Yvonne looking at me, with a sideways, smiling expression. She grabs my arm playfully and I reflexively pull it away. I suddenly want to tell her everything: that I’m not going to marry her; that I think she’s lovely but I have a girlfriend back at home and I’m sorry for lying. She turns away, confused, and walks ahead of us. Juan and I watch her disappear into a shop. She emerges with a colourful friendship bracelet, which she curls gently around my wrist, securing it in place with four tight knots.

In the back of the car, Juan translates for her: “Yvonne wants you to know she thinks it’s more important for a man to be kind than to be beautiful.”

There’s a silence.

“Juan,” I say. “Take her home.”

On receipt of their $250 deposit for this $700 ‘Weekend Tour’, the agency emails potential grooms a list of ‘recommended questions’ to ask their dates, each one coming with a helpful explanation as to why the query should be posed.

I sit on the sofa in the agency’s interview room and scan the sheets nervously. Outside the window, the taxis and mopeds of Medellin’s wealthy Poblado district putter past the restaurants and bars that are still yet to open. The staff have clearly thought hard about how to make this space conducive for the relaxed interrogation of candidate beloveds. There’s a vase filled with plastic orchids on the low glass coffee table; a magazine rack containing a series of wedding glossies and, on the wall above me, a large photograph of Paris.

I try to memorise the "recommended questions". “Do you live with your parents? Why ask this? Ladies from Medellin tend to live with their parents until they get married. This question may uncover problems in the family, a very independent character in the girl or something she might be hiding… Would you prefer to live in a foreign country if you married a foreigner? Why ask this? Any family orientated woman should be reluctant to leave her family and country but will do so with a loving husband… Ask the Lady if she likes some of your hobbies, for example, 'Do you like to go out to eat dinner?'…”

My first date is Monica. She’s 28, shy and has fingers weighed down by silver rings. She still lives with her parents and has two children of her own, one ten, the other eight months. She works in a government call centre and enjoys cycling and pop music. Like Yvonne, she doesn’t approve of Colombian men because they consider it normal to have seven girlfriends. She joined the agency two years ago because she wants a better life for her children. She’d be willing to leave the country if she met the right man.

And that’s when it begins. A silence so thick it’s as if a silo of custard has been emptied into the room. My brain is entirely empty. Here follows an excerpt of the exchange between Monica and myself, via today’s interpreter (a moonlighting freight company executive named Linda), that dragged itself agonisingly through 45 minutes.

Me: What does your son want to be when he grows up?

Monica: A footballer or an architect.

Me: An architect? That’s great. Where did he get that idea?

Monica: My cousin is an architect.

Me: What does your cousin design? Houses? Offices?

Monica: Buildings.

[Long, itchy silence]

Me: Do you like animals?

Monica: Yes. I like animals. Do you like animals?

Me: Yes. What animals do you like?

Monica: Cats. What animals do you like?

Me: Dogs.

[Longer, itchier silence]

Me: What food do you like?

Monica: Beans.

Me: Beans?

Monica: Have you ever eaten beans?

Me: No.

There are three more interviews after Monica. None of them are any easier. The monotony is only broken by the day’s final candidate, who arrives, blushing and grinning, direct from the lunatic asylum. She works there, she tells us, testing psychiatric medication on schizophrenics and people with “narcotic psychosis”. But that’s not the thing that’s most remarkable about Laura. What I’ll never forget about Laura is her appearance.

When booking a ‘Romance Tour’, applicants are required to select 25 women from an online catalogue. After noting down the numbers of the first 10 or 15, you run out of attractive ones. What happens then you start feeling a bit sorry for some of the candidates. Without really thinking all that much about it, you begin to make sympathy votes.

Laura is a sympathy vote. She says she’s 27 but she looks 45. At least three of her teeth are the wrong colour. Her chin has the unfortunate appearance of ending around two inches in front her nose. She says she’s been with the agency for five years and has never been picked before. Then, she tells me I have beautiful eyes.

“What kind of men do you like?” I ask.

“Men with your frame and hair.”

“What if your sons don’t like me?”

“That won’t be a problem.”

By now, Laura’s leaning towards me, her elbows on the arm of her chair. She’s staring at me intensely with her violently painted face.

“Would you be willing to leave Colombia?” I ask, dubiously.

“I’d be willing to move anywhere except Panama, Ecuador or Cuba.”

“But I live on the other side of the world.”

“I’d move anywhere if it’s love.”

There’s a gap of two hours between Laura’s departure and tonight’s main event: a dinner in a restaurant with five of my selections. As today’s translator’s been booked for the whole day and her clock is still running, I ask her to take me “somewhere brilliant in Medellin”. Twenty minutes later we’re pulling into a shopping mall.

Linda shows me around, proudly pointing out the potted shrubs, the sofa areas and the Dunkin Donuts concession. We settle with orange juices in a Wi-Fi Zone. She tells me that all of the women in the agency’s books count as middle class, earning around the standard national wage is $740 a month so even the moderately wealthy western clients count, for them, as rich beyond hope. I ask her about some of her memorable interviews.

“I had this one Spanish guy,” she says. “He was in computers. Every girl he meets he asks, ‘I am a sexual addict. I need intercourse once a day. Can you provide this?’ They all said no. I also had a very fat pilot from American Airlines. Every girl he meets, he says, ‘I have finally found you. The search is over. You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen’. But nobody wanted him. At the end of his tour, he took me to dinner and said to me, ‘I have finally found you. The search is over. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen’. But the creepiest was a man from Ukraine. He lived in the basement of his parents house, had red hair and a high pitched voice and said God told him to come to Colombia to find a wife. I asked him, ‘Did God tell you in a prayer?’. He said, ‘No. He came round my house.’”

“Does anyone ever find love?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says. “The agency had three engagements just this month.”

She looks at her watch.

“Come on,” she says. “You’re lucky. We’ve just got time to see the train.”

'Dante', from New York, has paid for a two-month tour; he's yet to find a bride (Jacquie Boyd)

A surprise guest joins us for dinner: a New Yorker in his late thirties, name of Dante. His appearance is notable chiefly for the numerous ways in which it manages to be round: he’s by no means obese, and yet has a circular head and cheeks like he’s carrying two peach-halves in his mouth. Green chinos cover his plump buttocks; a denim shirt and a white vest hug his figure-of-eight torso. Dante is rich. He owns a website that churns away by itself on a distant server, regularly dropping cash into his bank account. This has enabled him to devote his life to his international hunt for a romantic companion. Dante has paid the agency for a two month tour and he tells me he’s planning on living in Medellin for the rest of the year.

“I was given some good advice before I came here,” he tells me sternly over the dinner table. “There are two warning signs. One: if she asks for money, don’t put up with it. Two: If she starts whining, don’t put up with it. So, okay, the first one is common sense. But the second one? I liked that one. I don’t know what women are like when you come from but in the US men are expected to put up with a whole bunch of whining.”

Linda scrunches her nose in distaste at his offensive comment and sucks on her bottle of Pepsi. The three women around me chatter, obliviously, in Spanish.

“Are you into Incas?” Dante asks me. “Because I can really recommend Peru. They’re more eager over there, if you know what I mean. But you’ve got to be into them – they’re about four feet tall.” He takes a bite of his steak and shakes his head. “The thing you gotta watch with Incas is they’re always half an hour late. Always.”

Dante slumps into silence. He chews his meat sullenly, his eyes dragging in desultory fashion over our guests. We’re joined, tonight, by a smiley trainee chef, a haltingly under-dressed shirt-maker and a lawyer who works for the Colombian government prosecuting paramilitaries.

“Cheer up Dante,” says Linda. “Why do you look sad?”

“I’ll tell you why,” he says. “I’ve been here for six weeks already and I haven’t found anybody.”

“What are you looking for?” she asks.

He puts one arm around the shoulders of the cleavagey tailor and the other on her stomach.

“I want someone who’s as friendly as this one, as pretty as that one and with the brains of that one. And I have to be interested in what they do. Like, if she’s a lawyer, that would be okay because I could probably talk about that for the rest of my life. But a cook? A tailor? I couldn’t talk to a tailor for the rest of my life.”

“What kind of things do you like to talk about?” she asks.

Dante shrugs as if it’s a stupid question.

“Philosophy, literature, politics, science.”

Linda shakes her head.

“You ask too much!” she says.

Dante ignores Linda and looks at me accusingly.

“As for you,” he says. “You can’t expect to fall in love over one weekend. You wanna fall in love, you gotta give it time.”

If the kinds of men who attend these tours haven’t surprised me, the women certainly have. Where I thought there’d be crafty operators desirous of visas and (relative) riches there has only been softness and honesty; noble women looking for dependable love and a gentler future for their children. Where I thought I’d be picking taloned fingers off my crotch I have only been shyly passed email addresses on torn-off squares of paper. Undoubtedly, there are soft mercenaries on the books of agencies like this. But there are also many who are simply lonely. Like Laura. When asked if she’d miss her family the response she gave was the defining moment of my strange weekend. Looking back at me with plaintive eyes, she said “If you have love, you have everything.” And just like the hopeful groom sitting in front of me, I think she actually believed it.